Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori
by The Seventh L
Summary: Smiley's nights are haunted by the faces of familiar ghosts. (Spoilers for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and The Honourable Schoolboy. Canon character death referenced.)


In his line of work, there are always bodies. It is expected of you, when you join the Circus, to anticipate a little red on one's conscience. For queen and country, they tell you. Of course it is.

There has never been a secret that was not colored with another man's blood. Secrets are the broken outlines of men and women against the pavements and bedsheets of foreign countries. A spy's life is not a cheap one, whether in life or afterward. Scores of men have died so that many more can live on in peace, unaware of the spy's existence. George Smiley, semi-retired civil servant for the Circus, is intimately aware of this fact.

He has always been haunted by the nameless bodies of those his work has been responsible for ending. It is an almost fatal flaw, a spy with a conscience. Restless nights are nothing new to his creaking bones.

Recently, the ghosts of George Smiley have started carrying weight, the weight of their names and lives and memories. They've taken up residence in his bed, disturbing his already fragile sleep. Each one of them is not a stranger to him. He has had a hand in all of their deaths, some more than others. It is his duty, after all, and George has always been so good at seeing things through to the end.

For queen and country. For the Circus. For the glory of empires still crumbling into dust. For Ann, whom he still loves.

The only one that doesn't make sense, at least at first, is the pale crease-lined face of Control that watches Smiley from the corner of the room. Even in death, he manages to make a throne for himself out of a simple chair, sitting with all the self-appointed importance of a visiting dignitary. Like all the others, he doesn't have a voice. For this small mercy, Smiley is glad; he can only imagine what Control would have to say if he saw his precious company of men now: scattered in the darkness, afraid, looking for guidance in all the wrong places.

They have all become scattered playing pieces across a vast chessboard with no game master in sight. It is this and the unblinking eyes of Control that keep Smiley up those long nights after the fall. It is a hungry feeling for closure that not even the warm presence of Ann Smiley's body can dissuade.

After he is out of retirement and has become caretaker of a fractured Circus, Smiley finds that his most frequent nocturnal visitor is a dark-haired man in a shabby suit and coat. The ghost shivers as if he's come in from the cold; his eyes are distant, looking at something in the distance. He stands over the older man's bed and angles his head down, so as to let Smiley see the oddly neat hole in his head where Prideaux's expert marksmanship reached its target.

It is almost infuriating how at ease Bill Haydon's ghost looks in the other man's bedroom, but not surprising. He had done his best sleuthing in Smiley's bed.

In the protection of daylight and in the palace where Control once ruled, he makes a personal vow. No more useless deaths at their expense. No more Haydons. The watchful eyes of Karla's portrait are his only witness.

The one thing you should learn before joining the Circus is this: there will always be a price for dealing in lies and the price is always someone's life. Whether it's an innocent life or not depends on how you play your cards. Or how you define innocent.

On the night Smiley returns from Hong Kong, he finds himself lying in bed in the grip of insomnia, with no warm body to keep him company. He rubs his eyes with his fists and in the cloudy haze of moonlight streaming in from the window sees that Haydon has been joined by a cocky-mouthed journalist in plain clothes, his body smeared in sand and gunpowder. For a second, one could be fooled into thinking he smells liquor on the spirit's outline.

Westerby smiles, mouth bright red. He looks like he can't tell if he's sad or angry, but his eyes are lost, so very lost in the darkness of Smiley's quarters.

The judging eyes of the dead follow the beggarman to his sleep. They remind him that there is work yet to be done. One of these nights, he will sleep with his mission fulfilled. That night is not this night.


End file.
